Eat. Run. Love. Philly

Shake Up Christmas

“I got dreams and I got love, I got my feet on the ground and family above”-Train

This past weekend, I hosted my Second Annual Ugly Sweater Party. I didn’t realize how small my apartment was until 15 people were crammed in my living room/kitchen area. I spent all of Friday night and Saturday morning cooking and preparing. I thought Joey was going to break up with me about sixteen different times throughout the day. I can get a little neurotic when throwing parties. Although I know it’s totally unrealistic, I love having things as perfect as possible. The house has to be spotless, even though it gets destroyed 20 minutes into the party, and there has to be plenty of food and drinks. I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off all day. When I woke up this morning, my legs were so sore. Granted, I ran ten and a half miles the morning of the party, and didn’t sit down pretty much all day or night. But, it was totally worth it because it was such a blast. The one thing I really love about being with Joe is that we always have a good time together, no matter what we’re doing. Then you add our random mix of friends and it gets even better. There is nothing better than bringing old and new friends together.

Throwing parties is something that kind of runs in my family. Being Italian and all, we show our love through food and wine. At home, the kitchen is the center of our house. When people come over, that’s where they end up. We just sit in the kitchen, and cook and drink and talk. I worked in event planning for a while and absolutely loved it because it’s a part of my blood. I love hosting parties and seeing people have a good time. So for this party, the first one Joey and I were doing together, I wanted to make it extra special. It was the first time in a while that all of our friends were getting together. I started menu planning a week or so before Thanksgiving. I didn’t want to do anything too complicated, but have enough food that people could munch on different things. I decided to do mostly finger foods. I searched pin after pin on Pinterest for hours until I narrowed it down to three dips: Spinach and Sun Dried Tomatoes, Mississippi Sin Dip, and Crack Dip. I put a little humus out too, because who doesn’t love humus?! I also made these tasty little Pizza Roll Ups, which were delicious and super easy to make. And to make Joey happy, I made his favorite meatballs. All those recipes were loaded with sodium, so of course I needed to make something sweet. Although it gave me several grey hairs, I made Santa’s Hat Party Mix, with a little twist. I didn’t do the Bugles, so it turned out more like a puppy chow mix. I couldn’t get the white chocolate to melt to the right consistency to drizzle over the mix. I literally went through 48 ounces of white choco chips trying to get it to work. Finally, I threw in my hat and just made a confectionary sugar type mix . It must have tasted good because I had no leftovers to put away at 2:30am. I was so focused on food, I completely forgot to mention what we drank. My favorite holiday drink is a Peppermint Patty shot. You put some chocolate syrup in your mouth then take a shot of peppermint schnapps. So good, but very dangerous when the schnapps are 101 proof.

I didn’t take any individual pictures of the food, because by the time the food was put out, it was half gone. Ugly Sweater was such a success that I may consider hosting New Year’s Eve here too. Hopefully Joe can handle another day of cleaning toilets and panicking about center pieces. Oh and for the record, I still have no idea what my New Year’s Eve plans are. No one can come to any conclusions, so I may be stuck not doing anything on my second favorite holiday. As long as I’m in a dress and drinking champagne, I don’t care where I am :)